Justifiable Versions of Events

JVE A : Justifiable Versions of Events
Berlin, DE
2014–2015

JVE A is a trans-disciplinary collective for research in art, design, and theory, momentarily based in Berlin. The identity is verbal and fugitive: each year a new phrase is commissioned, the initial letters of which spell “JVE” (2014) or (2015) “JVE A”.

In 2014 the collective was named “Justifiable Versions of Events” by Will Holder, after a conversation with Robert Ashley — “I’ve been thinking about this a lot: I’ve been thinking about how to get the ensemble to sing the story so that it is de-personalized. It doesn’t sound like Jackie followed by Tom, followed by Sam, etc. It just sounds like everybody is telling the [same] story and they [each] contribute lines from time to time. [They all become narrators?] Everybody’s a narrator.”

2 color Risograph print

In 2015 Ann Cotten wrote “As D.H. Lawrence demonstrated at the beginning of the century in his subtle descriptions of reality, Art is a full-fledged member of class society. As bewildered as any young sprout in its position would be, it has no better idea than to shed its humanistic, bourgeois clothing and stand naked, using neither nature nor utopia. This does not diminish its power”, and named the collective “Jaw Versus Eye Attack.”